the pleasure of making

Recently, as you may have noticed, I’ve been enjoying making clothes. I’ve been enjoying planning and shopping for fabrics for those clothes. I’ve been enjoying designing and creating new embroideries for my new Portuguese whitework book and upcoming classes. I’ve been enjoying making food that fits with my own and others’ dietary/allergy requirements.

Now, if you think about it, I could quite easily go out and purchase a new bag instead of labouring for many hours over the one that I designed and constructed for myself over the past week. I could easily go out and purchase a new dress instead of making one for myself or either of my daughters. I could easily not have a cupboard full of embroideries instead of labouring intensely over articles that often are basically useless. I could easily buy mass-produced foodlike substances from my local supermarket, and just reheat them in the microwave, instead of knowing what each of those real ingredients that go into my food are.

But I don’t want to do that.

Why? Because I like making things. I like creating. I like the satisfaction of making something new, and admiring my own handiwork. Whether others admire it or not is immaterial, if I have gained satisfaction from it myself.

However, there is value in sharing these creations. I prefer to share a delicious meal that I have made with others, rather than eating it by myself, because a meal is about more than just the food, it is about the company and the shared experience. I prefer to let others see the clothes I have made and enjoy wearing (or others enjoy wearing, if they are for someone else), rather than hiding them away in a wardrobe. I prefer to share my embroidery with others, in the hope that they may gain enjoyment from them also.

And when I have made these things, they are more precious and more valuable to me than if I had simply bought them. Its very much harder to treat a piece of clothing badly, when you know how much time and effort went into making it. Its very much harder to enjoy the real flavours of a meal when you don’t know what each of those chemical additives tastes like, as opposed to the vegetables you chopped and added to the meal.

Its like there’s a story that goes behind each embroidery, each dress, each meal. If I can tell you the surrounding events that happened during the period I created that embroidery, or where I purchased the fabric for that dress and the serendipitous find that it was, or why each of those ingredients went into that meal, it becomes much more part of my personal history. It becomes part of me, and who I am and what went in to make me me.

All these things are factors in why it is important for me to make, and why it is pleasurable for me to create.

There are other reasons too, like the fact that I embroider because it is a gift that God has given me, and that by doing it to the best of my ability, I am giving it as an act of worship to my God, the ultimate creator. That will always be part of it for me.

But some of my compunction to create is much more base than that. Some of my hankering to make is just because making is pleasurable.

Therefore I will continue to create.